🚲 Yet another cycleway just opened in London! Euston to Finsbury Park without traffic

You can cycle from Euston in central London to Finsbury Park entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes.

The route is 5.2km long (3.2 miles) and makes use of the new protected lanes on York Way, as well as the LTN at Phoenix Road, the new development at Granary Square, Cycleway 6 and Cycleway 50.

If you find this video useful or you just enjoy watching it please remember to subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon so you’re alerted to new videos, as I try to post new ones like it every week.

And if you like what the channel is doing and want to support it, you can also contribute to the London Cycle Routes Patreon below. It really helps keep the channel going:

http:/patreon.com/londoncycleroutes

You can see a digital map of the route and download a GPS/GPX file to use on whatever device or app you want here:

https://www.komoot.com/tour/2440983824?share_token=aG5Gv3N096kcFA8noqcUGY19eNAqie7BObfuGsOArtMmbeO1Bx&ref=wtd

And you can find a viewer-created and maintained map of all the London Cycle Routes videos here:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1h9Hxm57fPvZmcuSXajM_Wu0G0s6f_bs&ll=51.505213496092054%2C-0.1285238120117249&z=12

I also highly recommend the Safe Cycle London map for route planning, which is compiled by @SafeCycleLDN on twitter:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1XlpvN9R-Wg7qZHyezO8y-eVlftr4e0WX&hl=en&ll=0%2C0&z=12

Hello and welcome back to London Cycle Roots. Today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from Houston in central London to Finsbury Park in North London. This ride takes just 20 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes, thanks in part to a new cycle way that’s just opened up on York Way. By public transport, this is an easy journey on the Victoria line and takes just 18 minutes doortodoor. But cycling now pretty much matches it. If you find this video useful or you just enjoy watching it, then please don’t forget to subscribe to the channel as I try to post new videos just like it every week. I’d also like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supports the channel on Patreon. if you’d like to contribute too, then you can find a link in the description below the video. All right, let’s get going. So, we’re starting on Evershalt Street on the side of Houston station and we’re going to head into Phoenix Road. Phoenix Road was closed to motor traffic last year and has had some new planting and seating added, creating some muchneeded public space near the big railway stations in this part of town, but also a traffic-free cycle route from Houston towards St. Pancress and King’s Cross, which we’re starting by taking today. The star of the show in this week’s video is the new protected cycle lane on York Way, which we’ll get to in a bit. But there have been some other improvements and changes to the streets around here recently, which I’ll point out as we go with more planned for the future, too. For now though, we just want to get past the railway. So take a left onto these stepped cycle lanes down Midland Road and then prepare to turn right into Pancress Road when we get to the next big junction. To make this right turn, there is actually a little painted waiting area here that you can sit in until there’s a gap in the traffic or the junction is cleared and then you head into the tunnel under the railway. Don’t forget to make use of the protected cycle way here as if you miss it, you’re not really able to join it further down. Camden Council actually has plans to redo this street and goods way on the other side of the junction with slightly improved cycle lanes. To be honest, I think they’re good enough already. So, I didn’t bother waiting before shooting this video, but it’ll be nice to see improvements. One feature of this road is the zebra crossings. There’s one here and then one for cyclists as well further up which are in pretty much permanent use with a constant stream of people walking across. As a result, there are massive tailbacks of cars on Goods Way all the time. Um, I think there are plans to actually change one of these crossings or maybe both of them to a signalized crossing, but I actually hope that they keep the zebra as it’s kind of funny to see pedestrians have the upper hand in such a consistent way. Now, you could go straight on on Goods Way to get to the bottom of the Yorkway cycle lanes. And if you’re just coming to have a look at the whole scheme, maybe that’s the way to go. But actually, today we’re going to cut a corner through this newly developed area of Kings Cross around Granary Square. It’s actually kind of insane how much this area has changed in the last decade or so. All those buildings you see ahead of us are brand new. Um, it was previously abandoned railway land and for ages obviously a building site. It’s usually held up as one of the more successful urban development schemes in the city and for our purposes it does certainly create an almost traffic-free direct route in the direction we want to go. You are allowed to cycle on Lewis Cubbet Walk down here. There is signage at the other end indicating that it’s shared space with pedestrians though. It would be nice to have some signage at that end as well just so that it’s more clear. Lewis Kubbet, by the way, was a civil engineer and the original architect of King’s Cross station, which is obviously very nearby. Now, we are joining York Way with its new cycle lanes. You may remember that there were lanes on here before they closed the road for works a couple of years ago, but there were really just a few plastic ones. These permanent lanes are a huge improvement and provide a lot more protection. There is a difference depending on whether you’re going uphill or downhill though. Uphill, which is obviously trickier to ride up. Um, that’s been prioritized in the design and there’s continuous protected lane more or less the whole way up. You can see it here. Um, the downhill has some gaps where the road is narrower and they haven’t been able to fit protection in both directions, but it still works pretty well thanks to the speed you get from going downhill and the trickier sections do have protection. This junction with Brewery Road is still in its original state, but I believe that Camden Council has plans to install a proper protected Cyclops style junction there as a separate project in the future, which will be very, very cool when it’s done. I’ve ridden the whole thing in both directions, and I’d say that uphill is generally excellent, while downhill is pretty much adequate. But I’m now comfortable recommending York Way as a route in both directions, whereas previously I didn’t really put it in videos. The route splits at the Camden Park Road oneway system here. Southbound, there’s actually a wide cycle track continuing up Yorkway, which is really pleasant to ride on. Whereas northbound, we’re going to use this crossing into Cliff Villas to join cycleway 50 when it gets to Cliff Road. In both directions, cycleway 50 is met really nicely, and switching between the routes is very comfortable. For the next part of the route, we’re going to be following C50 and that’s going to take us towards Finsbury Park. Normally at this junction, you would have to wait for the traffic lights, but they seem to be completely dead when I was here, so I basically just had to wait for a gap in the traffic to go across. A few more thoughts about York Way before we move on. There’s a bit more cycle lane out of King’s Cross, which we didn’t use today. In total, the scheme is about a mile long, so it’s a significant new piece of cycleway. It’s a joint project between Camden and Islington. York is actually the burough boundary. Camden often builds temporary cycleways with plastic wands and then comes back and redo them with permanent materials. Sometimes there’s not much of a difference, but actually the difference on this one is pretty huge. So, if you tried the old plastic wand lanes and didn’t like them, then do come back and check these out because they’re definitely a gamecher for this street. I believe that Islington is planning cycle lanes on Market Road and possibly beyond which will also connect really nicely to the Yorkway route. Plus, I hope that one day it can connect through King’s Cross and all the big roads around there to Grazin Road and go right down to Hoben. um that would require TFL to get involved. So, don’t hold your breath, but it’s a really obvious thing to do. All in all though, really pleased to see these lanes finished, and 2025 is looking like a pretty good year for delivery. For the rest of our route today, we’re on cycleway 50, which so far has been on quiet streets without through traffic, but is about to move on to light protected lanes down main roads. As we talked about on this channel before, the big thing that we don’t like about C50 is that it splits into two. So, in this direction, we’re going to be taking a one-way lane down Seven Sisters Road, which we’re just getting to. And in the other direction, it’s a one-way lane down Tolington Road, and they both meet at Caledonian Road, where we just were. This approach uh to designing the cycle way is either really inconvenient or kind of incomprehensible to a lot of people. So, what you tend to find is a lot of people cycling the wrong way down both of these lanes all the time, which is really dangerous. And there are no traffic lights, giveway lines, or other features of a road in the opposite direction. Um, so people tend to just sort of um kamicazi down the lane. The whole thing should, in my opinion, be re-engineered into a two-way track down Seven Sisters Road here. Even if it has to be slightly on the narrower side, it would be a much safer and more useful design. The route as it is is still useful for getting up to Finsbury Park end to end like we’re doing today, but the one-way nature of it makes it a lot less useful for local residents who might want to make say a long a local journey uh to the supermarket and not go the whole way around the gyator on a bike. Unfortunately, today as well, Temp’s Water has also closed off a section of the lane stay. Apologies, but the camera is just going to skullk around in despair for a few seconds before I decide to just ignore the interruption and finish the route. In theory, TfL is supposed to extend cycleway 50 all the way up to Tottenham past Finsbury Park. Uh, currently it doesn’t even quite really get to Finsbury Park station. It stops on this side of the railway, which we’ll see in a second. um it hasn’t announced any plans to uh to actually uh construct the next phase. Um so I’m keeping an eye out for those and if they’re announced then we will absolutely be looking at them on this channel and riding them when they get built. Uh for now though, we’re just going to be stopping very slightly short of the entrance to Finsbury Park Station at Font Hill Road. Thanks very much for riding along with me today. If you want to see more new cycle infrastructure in London, then do hit the subscribe button on YouTube and hit the bell icon too, so that you get alerts about new videos. And let me know in the comments what you think of all of that, particularly York Way, which I’m pretty sure only opened in the last couple of days. So, this is all hot off the press. And I shot this on the day that I’m posting it as well, Sunday, 27th of July. And uh thank you once again to everyone who supports the channel on Patreon. If anyone else wants to pitch in, then the link to the Patreon page is in the description below the video. Thank you once again to everyone and goodbye.